Infamous torrent site The Pirate Bay went dark on December 9th following a raid by Swedish authorities. While there are signs the domain is not dead, anyone hoping to share information over BitTorrent must find a different service to facilitate their needs.

Theres no shortage of alternatives available. The Pirate Bay is just the most well known among a collection of torrent sites that offer similar services to users, and transitioning to them is a cinch. Weve picked out five that have a well-deserved reputation for selection, availability and reliability.

Keep in mind these are BitTorrent sites. While they dont taunt the authorities as aggressively as The Pirate Bay they may host illegal content and infected files. Use them at your own risk.

Though a relatively new player in the BitTorrent scene itdebuted a little over a year ago Isohunt boasts an incredibly deep and devoted community. Further, the sitecloned Pirate Bays entire database after the latter shut down, giving it a massive leg up on its competition. Though Isohuntstrives topreserve the sanctity of freedom on the Internet, itdid mention it plans to deactivate the clone should Pirate Bay come back online. Still, the sitefeatures an easy to navigate website, a list of daily top searches, and provides a consistently updated forum. If you relied on Pirate Bay before its demise, Isohunt no doubt deserves a chance at being your go-to torrent site.

The site 1337x states it began by wanting to fill an apparent void where it felt there existed no quality, ad-free torrent sites. The site launchedwith this thought in mind,and now offers usersan easy to navigate and safe system for downloadingtorrents.For those who like to give back and upload files, the staff behind 1337x goes the extra mile by verifying active users and any content uploaded to the site. It also offers a helpful community forum on which the sites active user base frequently chimes in on.With the amount of work put in to make sure 1337x brings its users a positive experience, its a worthyPirate Bayreplacement.

Torrentz differs from the other optionslisted as it doesnt host a single torrent on thewebsite. Rather, Torrentz acts like Google and operates strictly as a search engine, directing users to sites featuring the torrents they want. Because the site doesnt host any pirated material of its own, you never have to worry about it coming under fire orgoing offline. Better yet, if you have a favorite site say, Pirate Bay which goes down, Torrentz stillhelps find the torrent you desire via other BitTorrent sites.

Before Isohunt, Kickass Torrents established itself as viable competition for Pirate Bays crown.Despiteblockagein the United Kingdom and Italy, Kickass Torrents remains one of the most popular BitTorrent sites on the web. Featuring an impressive library of both rare and popular content, it doesnt take long to find exactly what you want to download. ForBitTorrent novices, each of the sites download links features mostly useful comments on torrent accuracy and quality. If the sites still got you stumped, the gang behind Kickass Torrents offers a helpful list of FAQs and a healthy library ofcommunity threads. Its basically The Pirate Bay without so many hot, single moms in your area.

Related:How BitTorrent lets you download virtually anything

RARBGs features look just likeother sites on this list, but it does come with a few tricks of its own. For starters,the site offersthe ability to filter out any adult content, which is a welcome option for those who hateweeding out various XXX movies from search results. For pop culture junkies, the sites front page featuresa list ofcurated news stories and dailyarticlesfrom Screenrant. If there are a few rainy days on tap and you dont know what to download, RARBGs Top 10 tab shows the ten most popular TV, movie, or music torrents currently downloading. Like most torrent sites, RARBG producesthe occasional pop-up window, but just refrain from clicking on any downloads or special deals.

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Get back in the torrent game with these five Pirate Bay alternatives

Ryan Heffington. Jean-Baptiste Huong/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Ryan Heffington.

"A Rational Conversation" is a column by writer Eric Ducker in which he gets on instant messenger or the phone with a special guest to examine a music-related subject that's entered the pop culture consciousness.

To help him wrap his head around music in 2014, Ducker chatted with Ryan Heffington. The Los Angeles-based choreographer and dancer was involved with two videos this year that turned out to be mega high profile phenomenons. He choreographed the video for Sia's "Chandelier," featuring an astounding performance by the then 11-year-old Maddie Ziegler, one of the stars of Lifetime's Dance Moms TV show, as well as the much debated video for Arcade's Fire "We Exist," featuring Andrew Garfield portraying a transgender woman. Other pieces that shouldn't be overlooked include the exquisite roller-skating work Heffington put together for "Gold" by Chet Faker and the showy interludes in Chromeo's "Old 45's." Heffington's work is often notable for the expressive performances that incorporate abstract modern dance movements into more mainstream forms. Here he and Ducker discuss what this year brought us and the types of performances they responded to.

What was your favorite music-related memory or experience of 2014?

There have been so many! One of them for sure was sitting at the Brite Spot after the MTV VMAs and getting a text from Sia telling me congrats. They announced Best Choreography via Twitter (glamorous) and she's how I found out.

What were some of the favorite shows or performances you went to?

Seeing FKA twigs at the Regent recently solidified my appreciation for her. Blood Orange at Coachella was incredible, and performing there [during the first week] with Arcade Fire was epic.

You were on stage with them?

We performed on this 10x10 raised platform in the middle of the audience in daisy dukes, flannels and heels for "We Exist." You can see it on the back screen in the video.

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A Rational Conversation: 2014 Through The Eyes Of A Choreographer

Scissr: a new mind-blowing dating app for lesbians. Photograph: Scissr

Its being tipped as the lesbian equivalent of Grindr, but classier, a dating app for lesbians, by lesbians: introducing, the none-too-subtly named, Scissr.

The free app, which will be available on iOS and Android, will fill a gap in the women-seeking-women app sector.

The brainchild of the Chicago-based climbing instructor Allison Ullrich, Scissr promises to offer a mind-blowing experience.

After experiencing little luck with the more traditional dating techniques of bar hopping and mingling with mutual friends, Ullrich hit on the idea of Scissr.

I think what spawned the idea was life reality and conversations Ive had with my friends regarding relationships and women, she told DNAinfo.

Ullrich was disappointed with heterosexual-focused apps and websites such as OkCupid, Match and Tinder.

Tinder, for instance, will often throw up men as options for women who have set their preferences for other women.

With the the help of her friend, Adnan Beck and developers Ora Interactive, Scissr was born.

Users must be over 18, and are allowed to upload three photographs and write a bio of 300 words.

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Scissr dating app: the new Tinder for lesbians?

We puny humans can be depressingly fragile and flawed, a realization that's all the more discouraging when we consider the incredible potential for robots. Here are 12 reasons why machines will always have the edge over us meatbags.

Before we get started, it's important to point out that I took a normative approach to this analysis. For the sake of simplicity, I assumed a sort of status quo among humans, one in which our future selves and descendants have opted out of enhancement technologies. Clearly, should we take the transhuman path to the future, our technologically enhanced minds and bodies would better match those of robots. We may even find ourselves integrating and fusing with them.

That said, we still don't know how safe, effective, and accessible human enhancement technologies will be. It's also an open question as to whether or not human enhancement will ever be socially sanctioned.

The development of robotic technologies, on the other hand, shows no signs of waning. Should we humans stay the same, here are 12 ways robots could come to dominate us in the future (listed in no particular order).

It's easier to build robots than it is to make humans. Currently, robots have to be designed and constructed by us, but that's set to change with the introduction of fully automated systems capable of manufacturing other robots on an assembly line. While still in its primitive stages, researchers at the Modular Robotics Lab at the University of Pennsylvania have already developed a robot that can build other robots with spray foam.

Robots of the future will also be capable of reproduction, or what mathematician John von Neumann referred to as kinematic self-replicating machines. Researchers are the University of Oslo have already developed squirming three-limbed starfish-bots who can produce their own parts and adapt to novel environments, and Matt Denton at Robosavvy has developed a hexapod robot equipped with a cutting tool enabling it to fashion various machine parts including, conceivably, its own parts. Considering these early developments, and given how long it takes to produce and raise a human (not to mention the costs), it's reasonable to assume we could eventually reach a tipping point when robots will start to outnumber us.

As this chart from the International Federation of Robotics shows, we're already on the way there at least for industrial robots. The IFR estimates that, from 2015 to 2017, robot installations will increase by 12% on average per year.

Robots will be able to change their bodies at will. It's an advantage we humans simply won't have (mind uploading technologies aside). In the far future, robots will be able to transfer, or upload, their digital minds from one robot to another. Should a robot body fail, become obsolete, or inadequate for a given task, there will always be another one available.

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12 Reasons Robots Will Always Have An Advantage Over Humans

Yesterday, NBN Co announced that it had successfully renegotiated its $11 billion deal with Telstra to acquire its existing copper network, as well as setting up contracts to buy and continue using the cable (HFC) networks owned by Telstra and Optus. While were seeing lots of high-fiving going on about the deal and how it might speed up the rollout of the National Broadband Network, there are still lots of uncertainties especially in terms of when consumers will actually get to enjoy the fruits of these arrangements.

Champagne picture from Shutterstock

These are the basic details, announced yesterday (I suspect that was a ploy to get onto the Sunday night TV news, invariably the highest-rated news broadcast of the week):

The basic plan for NBN Co hasnt changed. Most premises will be serviced by fibre-to-the-node, with either a cable or copper connection to that node. Sites which already have fibre-to-the-premises get to keep it, and its possible (but unlikely) that might also be necessary in areas where the copper isnt up to the task. Remote areas will be serviced by satellite.

While the deals represent progress, it is still a major backdown on the Coalitions pre-election NBN pledge that every household would have some form of access to the NBN by the end of 2016, with a minimum download speed of 25 megabits per second. By 2019, 90 per cent of households were predicted to enjoy minimum download speeds of 50 megabits per second.

The first speed promise remains, but the time frame is much flabbier. Were now told that two million households will be connected by mid-2016, and that everyone will be connected by 2020.

The second promise that 90 per cent of premises will have 50Mbps downloads remains in place, but has no time frame attached to it. This isnt surprising, since theres no clear way just yet that existing copper lines served from a local node can be upgraded to those speeds. And of course, when the original deadline to connect everyone has slipped by four years under the Coalition plan, its hard to stick to that kind of commitment.

Its also worth bearing in mind that there are two potential legal roadblocks to the deals as announced. Firstly, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has to approve the deals. With a 200-page contract to consider, that wont be a speedy process (especially bearing in mind were about to hit the Christmas break). The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) also has to approve Optus financial interpretation of its sell-off.

Add in the uncertainty over what kind of deal Telstra might make to help build the network, the highly variable nature of the copper network, and the list of reasons for delays NBN Co has already discussed, and 2020 seems like a very ambitious date. Ill stick my neck out and suggest there will definitely be delays.

And finally theres the biggest unknown of all what upload speeds well actually get to enjoy. The Coalitions stated intention is that speeds will be proportionate, which tells us precisely nothing. While upload speeds will inevitably be slower than download, the ratio can vary a lot. Under the previous NBN plans, there were four ratios: 12:1, 25:5, 50:20 and 100:40. For any customers on a copper wire connected to a local node, lifes not likely to be much better than 12:1.

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The NBN-Telstra-Optus Deal Is Still Overloaded With Unknowns

While NASA shoots for Mars, tech firms have a different kind of space race in mind: their mission is to colonise the space on your face. But that's not all they've been up to this week. We've had PS4s popping up, Instagram ascending, Samsung's secrets spilling and some deeply disturbing Facebook features. Welcome to an alarmingly alliterative Week in Tech!

If you fancied Sony's rather lovely 20th Anniversary PS4, you could have got one for just 19.94 - but you had to visit Sony's pop-up shop in London to get one. Inevitably many of the limited edition consoles have popped up on eBay with stupid price tags to match.

The god of dreams hasn't got out of bed, it seems: it looks like the hotly anticipated Project Morpheus VR headset from Sony won't arrive any time soon. Right now it is "purely an R&D project", but it's "something we're really, really excited about," Sony says. Tim Cook says much the same about Apple TV, which hasn't been updated since about 1937.

Sony isn't the only firm racing to take up space on your face. Google's at it too. While Glass appears to have fallen out of favour, the we-thought-it-was-just-a-gimmick Project Cardboard has been updated for more cardboard-related virtual reality. Could Cardboard be the star of Google IO 2015?

Fancy some new faces for your Android Wear smartwatch? You can get that and more from the latest Android Wear update, which brings designs featuring the minions from Despicable Me as well as more serious watch faces. Under the hood there is a host of improvements to the settings and notifications systems.

While we wait for the official launch of the Samsung Galaxy A7, details of the Galaxy S6 are starting to leak: it may have a metal frame, a dramatically different design, a better screen and maybe even a flexible display.

We also discovered that the Samsung Galaxy Alpha was leading a secret double life: while everybody thought it was wearing Gorilla Glass 3, it was actually clad in Gorilla Glass 4. If you wondered why your Alpha didn't break when you dropped it, shot it or ran over it with a tank, now you know.

What's the worst thing in the world right now? If you answered "drunken selfies", you'll be delighted to know that Facebook has some of the planet's finest brains working on a solution. Facebook's AI lab is working on an algorithm that can tell the difference between your face when you're sober and your face when you've had a few shandies and warn you before you upload anything. It's part of a much more serious and in no way frightening project that hopes to imitate the human brain.

The Facebook-owned Instagram is now bigger than Twitter, with more than 300 million monthly active users. Between them they've shared more than 30 billion photos of cats and lunch.

It's that time of year, and if you're looking for ideas for your email to Santa we'd love to help. The TechRadar team has come up with the must-have kit and accessories for Christmas 2014. The list includes GTA V, GTA V, GTA V and GTA V. We'd quite like GTA V.

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Week in Tech: Week in Tech: PS4 pop-ups, Instagram's lunch domination and the face space race

There are approximately 1.3 million apps available for our smartphones and tablets. Many are simply a bad idea. Most are average in use or scope. Fortunately, some very innovative developers have changed the way we used to do things for the better. Here are five mind-boggling apps that I know you're going to want.

1. Preserve old photos

You probably have photo albums and shoeboxes full of old print photos. If you take care of them they should last for decades, but during a move, house fire or natural disaster they might get damaged or destroyed. Plus, if they're sitting in a box or on the shelf, no one else can enjoy them.

That's why so many people spend hours scanning photos into a computer to preserve and share them. Unfortunately, scanning is a slow process.

You have to take the photo out of the photobook, put it on a scanner and wait for a while. Once you've scanned it, there's still a lot of work you have to do. You need to crop it, straighten it, color correct and clean up any scanning artifacts.

Now, there's an app that makes preserving print photos a snap, literally. It's called Heirloom (Free; iOS, Android). You simply take a picture of a photo and it does the cropping and color correcting automatically. You can even leave photos in their albums, so you don't risk damaging or losing them.

Once the photo is ready, you can upload it to Facebook, Twitter or another site, or upload it to Heirloom's own social network. You can upload as many photos as you want. So, what are you waiting for?

2. Get better customer service

How many hours of your life have you spent on hold waiting for customer service? It's probably more than a few. You could be doing much better things with your time.

That's what makes the FastCustomer app (Free; iOS, Android) such a must-have. Once you call customer service, it waits on hold for you. When the customer service agent picks up, FastCustomer rings you so you can talk to them. How neat is that?

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5 more apps that make you say wow

AccuRadio

This beautifully designed, simple to use radio service from Chicago allows listeners to choose from 900-plus radio channels, taking in everything from Miles Davis to Kenny Chesney to Eliott Carter. Its website is ad-funded, so the streams are occasionally interrupted by commercial messages, but not to an annoying level.

The Departure Lounge

Imagine Roger Moore and Tony Curtis gunning their Aston Martins along the Cte dAzure in 1971 and you'll get an idea of what this new station curated by a former TV producer is about. Bossa nova, funk, jazz and soul from the 1960s and 70s dominate the playlists which is no bad thing, providing youre in the mood for some vintage pizazz.

GENERAL LISTENING

FIP

Imagine a mixture of BBC 6 Music and late-night Radio 3, stir in a generous amount of Parisian chic, and youre some way to getting the measure of FIP, which remains one of my favourite music radio stations on the planet. Founded in Paris in 1971, its mission statement was - and remains - to broadcast an eclectic mix of music uninterrupted by the kind of noisy chitchat and advertising that you find almost everywhere else on French radio. They pay particular attention to the way in which songs on their playlist complement each other - meaning no jarring transitions, and plenty of unexpected musical dovetailing - and have an excellent website which makes it easy to see whats been played. Expect to hear everything from Haydn to Serge Gainsbourg to John Coltrane to De La Soul -- and beyond.

WCPE

Branding itself online as The Classical Station, WCPE is an eminently likeable classical music station from North Carolina. Its been listener-supported for over 30 years, and continues to pay for most of its operating costs from pledges and donations which is a sure-fire sign of a station that knows and respects its audience. Their playlists tend towards the popular - rather than the obscure or experimental - end of the classical spectrum, with regular appearances by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Handel and Rachmaninoff.

AUDIOBOO

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The best internet radio stations

After selling Girl Scout cookies the old-fashioned way since she was five, Rebecka Hicks, 16, is taking her firstleap into the world of online sales.

Pretty soon, Rebecka will put up her photo, perhaps a video of her making a sales pitch, on apersonal Web site. She'll send out eCards to reacha wider range of customers than she ever has before. Andwhile the overall design for her sales sitewill come from the Girl Scouts, what goes online is basically up to her. The organizationwon'treview the content, saying that suchprojects should stay between parents and their kids.

The move by the Girl Scouts this week to allow its troopers to sell cookies online has been met with mixed emotions by parents, officials within the organization and privacy advocates who raisedconcernsabout exposing so many girls, as young as 13, to the potential for cyber-bullying, online predators and other dangers of the Web. Some say the idea is long overdue: How can you teach entrepreneurship to a generationof young women without developing their online skills? But others are worried aboutencouragingso many children -- there are 2.3 million Girls Scouts in the country-- to court friends, coworkers of parents, acquaintances, and other consumers through Web sites that havelittleorganizational supervision.

It's a big step for the Girl Scouts -- and for the Hicks family.Rebecka said she's already excited to sell her waresto relatives who live far away and to allow customers topay with credit cards instead of cash. "I definitely think this will go forward in a positive way," she said.

The risks aren't lost on Hicks' mom. "I have concerns, but I feel as though they've put good measurements in place," said Krista Hicks, who lives in Mechanicsville, Va. Plus, she added, it doesn't do any good to fight the inevitable. "They do live in that world and this gives them more education and chances for thought about what the dangers that are out there."

Some are more hesitant about the push online. The Girl Scouts Council of the Nation's Capital -- the country's largest chapter with 90,000 members in the D.C. area -- said it isn'tparticipating in the "Digital Cookie" program yet, in part due tosafety concerns.

Lidia Soto-Harmon, chief executive of the D.C. Girl Scouts' council, agreedthe girls need to embrace technology, but said safety is still her first concern. The group's troopers will be allowed to set upcredit card payments, but notpersonal Web sites.

"We are known for being a traditional council," Soto-Harmonsaid. "We're making sure, to your point about security issues, that we're protecting the data on the girls, and what the girls are collecting."

The Scouts say that they have put in a number of measures to protect the girls from online predators, and have been working on this program for at least fiveyears. A Girl Scouts spokesman said that only a girl's first name will be part of her custom site -- similar to a seller's page on eBay. Her last name, location and other identifying information won't be listedby default. The organization also made sure that all customer and scout data is encrypted. Girls won't be required to set up Web sites, but those who do will have to take apledge for online safety, plus lessons on issues such as cyberbullying and dealing with strangers online.

But some online safety and security expertssaid not every family willunderstand the risks. Plus,its not easy for parents to monitor everything their kids are doing online.

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Selling Girl Scout cookies online can have a dark side

The Heirloom app lets you preserve old photos.(Heirloom)

There are approximately 1.3 million apps available for our smartphones and tablets. Many are simply a bad idea. Most are average in use or scope. Fortunately, some very innovative developers have changed the way we used to do things for the better. Here are five mind-boggling apps that I know you're going to want.

1. Preserve old photos

You probably have photo albums and shoeboxes full of old print photos. If you take care of them they should last for decades, but during a move, house fire or natural disaster they might get damaged or destroyed. Plus, if they're sitting in a box or on the shelf, no one else can enjoy them.

That's why so many people spend hours scanning photos into a computer to preserve and share them. Unfortunately, scanning is a slow process.

You have to take the photo out of the photobook, put it on a scanner and wait for a while. Once you've scanned it, there's still a lot of work you have to do. You need to crop it, straighten it, color correct and clean up any scanning artifacts.

Now there's an app that makes preserving print photos a snap, literally. It's called Heirloom (Free; iOS, Android). You simply take a picture of a photo and it does the cropping and color correcting automatically. You can even leave photos in their albums, so you don't risk damaging or losing them.

Once the photo is ready,you can upload itto Facebook, Twitter or another site, or upload it to Heirloom's own social network. You can upload as many photos as you want. So, what are you waiting for?

2. Get better customer service

How many hours of your life have you spent on hold waiting for customer service? It's probably more than a few. You could be doing much better things with your time.

Go here to see the original:

5 mind-boggling apps

(PRWEB) November 28, 2014

Flipbuilder, a publisher of user-friendly ebook creation software, has released its latest title, photo album software. According to Flipbuilder, this title is designed with ease of use in mind, and offers users great flexibility for creating online albums.

As the holiday season gets underway, timeless and priceless moments are often captured in images and shared across the miles. Families looking to create special holiday memories can use a photo album maker, which offers a wide array of templates and themes, as an ideal platform to not only create easy-to-view albums, but also share them with friends and family members around the world. Users simply save their photos into PDF format, upload them into the Flip PDF interface, and use the programs powerful yet simple tools to create stunning, eye catching albums viewable on both iOS and Android-enabled devices.

While the page flip software provides all the standard business-oriented features such as linkable text and Google analytics, it also includes easy Facebook and Twitter sharing, easy-to-build digital library, and a live audio/textual support icon which can walk beginners and experienced users alike through the process of creating a memorable presentation which families will cherish for years to come.

In an age of concerns over privacy and security, families looking to keep their special memories out of the public domain will enjoy Flip PDFs enhanced password security to keep photos and files safe. This is accomplished when users upload their albums into Flip PDFs easy-to-use, online hosting service which keeps files protected from a variety of threats, and gives families and individuals alike the ability to safely and securely share their project with others around the block, and around the world.

Available on Flipbuilders website, Flip PDF can be downloaded from their website in Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 versions, as well as Mac.

ABOUT FLIPBUILDER Flipbuilder is a publisher of presentation software titles for businesses and individuals alike. Based in Hong Kong, Flipbuilder has released their software lines in a variety of languages, and offer both hosting and support services.

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Page Flip Software Provider FlipBuilder Now Introduces A Creative Photo Album Suite

You can't always judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a social media profile by its cover image. In this column, youll learn how to make your own cover images for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn, including design ideas, correct sizes, and sage file format advice. This is your chance to get creative and let your personality shineafter all, an image is worth a thousand words!

The imagery you use for cover images among social media services doesnt have to be different, though each service wants slightly different pixel dimensions. While you can crop and reposition the image during the upload process, sizing it correctly ahead of time gives you more control and lets you plan for areas of the image thatll be covered by your profile picture or text overlay. Below are the currently recommended sizes for todays popular players (all sizes are in pixels), and while some services accept larger images, the sizes below work well on both desktop and mobile devices:

Facebook: Covers for personal or fan pages are 851x315. Your profile image is shown as overlay in the lower-left, with your name as a text overlay to its right. Facebook Groups have cover images of 801x250.

Twitter: Cover images are 1500x500. Your profile image is shown as overlay in the lower-left, with your name and bio appearing beneath it.

Google+: Cover images are 1080x608. Your profile image, name, and URL are shown to the left of your cover image, not as an overlay.

LinkedIn: LinkedIns cover images are 1400x425, but theyre currently for Premium (paid) accounts only. No overlays are shown atop the cover image.

A good profile image features your face or logo in full frame (left). In a full-length body shot, your face is too small to see (right); however, if the image is big enough, you can use the services zoom feature during the upload process to fix that.

Profile image sizes vary across services, too, though theyre always fairly small. A good rule of thumb is to upload a portrait-style photo of yourselfor your companys logo if its a business pageand then use the services cropping feature to make your head, neck, and shoulders fill the frame.

To make a great cover image, you need an application that lets you create a custom document size, and add more than one image to that document, as well as text. Such programs include TurboCollage ($5), Pixelmator ($30), Adobe Photoshop Elements ($100), Adobe Photoshop CC ($10/month with an Creative Cloud Photography subscription), and the like. (With enough skill you can do it in Aperture or Lightroom, but thats fodder for another storyit involves creating a custom paper size in the Print module, designing a new print template, and then using the identity plate and watermarking to add a logo and text.)

Perhaps the easiest program to use is Photoshop Elements 13; it sports a new Facebook Cover option in the Editors Create menu that makes a perfectly sized cover (and profile image) from one or more images using a variety of templates.

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How to make the best cover images for your social media accounts

The Oculus Rift's official consumer release is still months away, but that hasn't stopped developers from getting excited about the virtual reality headset and forging deeply innovative software that takes full advantage of VR's breathtaking potential.

And it's not just gaming developers whipping up mind-blowing projects, either.

Although it was originally created for games, the Rift headset is already promising to transform more practical fields like tourism, filmmaking, medicine, architecture, space exploration, and the battlefield. Even the basic way we perceive ourselves is up for grabs when the lines between physical and virtual begin to blur.

Here are ten of the coolest Oculus Rift experiments that have nothing whatsoever to do with gaming... and everything to do with changing the world we live in.

The Norwegian Army is experimenting with using the Oculus Rift to drive tanks, as reported byTeknisk Ukeblad, a Norwegian engineering journal. That country's army took four cameras with spherical lenses and placed them strategically on the outside of a tank. Then the driver sat inside wearing the Oculus Rift headset. Special software would convert the spherical images from the camera back to a normal view.

In the video above, the setup gave the driver a 185-degree overview of each side of the vehicle and allowed her to change views just by turning her head.It also has other advantages, such as a heads-up display showing vehicle tilt, speed, and orientation. And if the tank had to close all its hatches the Rift would still make it possible to see outside the vehicle from inside the fully armored enclosure.

The Norwegian Army, obviously, envisions using a system like this in battle conditions where it's not possible for the driver to have their head outside of the hatch.

One of the more fascinating aspects of virtual reality is just how easily the mind can be fooled by your senses. London-based production company Inition displayed that to great effect with a VR balance beam experiment at the 2013 Digital Shoreditch Festival.

Many participants were unable to overcome a sense of vertigo as they tried to walk across a beam hanging between two buildingseven though people knew they were in a room with a proper floor and not actually on a beam many feet up in the air. A fan blowing wind in their face didn't help.

Hoping to encourage visitors to South Africa, the country's tourism agency worked with virtual reality specialists Visualise to create a virtual tour of the country. The program allows people to experience highlights of a trip to South Africa, such as visits to markets and bars, shark diving, kitesurfing, and paragliding.

Read more:

10 mind-blowing Oculus Rift experiments that reveal VR's practical potential

Apps That De-Stress

$7.99/month to $419.95/forever

Is a job hunt majorly stressing out someone you love? Headspace is an app that uses proven mindfulness and meditation techniques to clear your skull. Headspaces website describes it as a gym membership for the mind.

Accessed through smartphone or computer, daily Zen mind exercises can be scheduled for two minutes or up to an hour. Headspaces website says itll help relax in three areas: health, performance, and relationships, but what we think sounds most helpful is the SOS function that claims to soothe someone during their worst meltdown.

Get a family member or friend a subscription and look forward to never playing phone therapist again. No one wants to hire a crazy person. Next

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Modern Gift Guide for the Chronic Job Seeker

The Blue, The Green is out now. It come from the album The Day's War, which is also out now.

For this track, the band have allowed fans to download the individual components of the song, and made the sheet music available, in order for fans to upload their own versions of the song. On their website they band wrote, "The Blue, The Green is a track that means an incredible amount to us as a band, so words cannot express how it feels to read so many amazing comments about how people over the world have interpreted the song, and what it means to each individual.

"With this in mind we want to create a new version of The Blue, The Green and want you to be on it

"We have provided tab and sheet music for all parts of the song,including new sections written especially for this version , and want you to download, perform & send them in to us.We will then mix the submissions into a new version of The Blue, The Green featuring you!"

It's a pretty unique idea. You can get involved here.

See Lonely The Brave's tour dates below.

OCTOBER

1 MANCHESTER DEAF INSTITUTE w. Marmozets (SOLD OUT)

2 GLASGOW KING TUTS w. Marmozets

3 LIVERPOOL O2 ACADEMY 2 w. Marmozets

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Lonely The Brave - The Blue, The Green

The Newport Beach-based Orange County Community Foundation marked its 25th anniversary Nov. 12 as nearly 700 philanthropists and business and community leaders attended its annual meeting at Hotel Irvine.

Since its founding in 1989, the foundation has awarded more than $300 million in grants and scholarships, supporting the work of nonprofits worldwide.

For more information, visit http://www.oc-cf.org or call (949) 553-4202.

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MIND Research gets $3.2-million gift

The MIND Research Institute of Irvine announced a $3.2-million contribution from The PwC Charitable Foundation to help improve youth financial literacy by developing game-based math instructional software.

MIND's financial-literacy curriculum will be the first to apply the visual ST Math approach toward financial concepts and simultaneously teach math skills required for financial literacy.

The program, geared toward sixth- through eighth-graders, will include areas such as saving and investing, planning and money management, homebuying, environmental sustainability, credit and debit, and risk and insurance.

MIND's programs reach more than 800,000 students and 31,000 teachers in 40 states, according to a news release. For more information, visit http://www.mindresearch.org.

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See the original post here:

Around Town: Newport-based foundation celebrates 25 years

People who want to be involved more deeply can pay 5,000 for a place in the viewing gallery at mission control.

By mid-morning Wednesday, the Kickstarter campaign had nearly 500 backers who have raised a total of almost 49,000. Lunar Mission One has up to December 17 to raise the required funds and move the project closer to lift off.

Government space cuts

David Iron, founder of Lunar Missions Limited, said the crowdfunding drive was a response to a cutback in the global cutbacks on space exploration.

"It is a response to the fact that governments' space missions are as limited as ever for financing the kind of space projects that are designed for advancing knowledge and understanding," Iron told CNBC by phone.

Read MoreUAE plans Mars mission in heated space race

"At the same time, by getting people involved in the financing, we are getting them involved in the project itself."

Bury your hair in space?

When Lunar Mission One lands on the moon's south pole, it will drill to a depth of at least 20 meters deep, but could go as far as 100 meters, with the aim of analyzing lunar rock to discover more about life on earth.

Excerpt from:

Send your DNA to the moon with crowdfunded mission

Director/producer Erik Anders Lang has announced the start of production of a new movie, "Be the Ball: A Golf Documentary," which looks at the history of the sport while conducting an experiment on the use of mind-control techniques on a select group of players. Lang proposes that mental fitness is more important than skill or physical conditioning in golf, and that honing mental acuity can take players "into the zone" to achieve demonstrable results in amateurs and pros alike.

The film will feature interviews with players like Bernhard Langer, Nick Price and Rory McIlroy; instructors and coaches including "Zen Golf" author Dr. Joseph Parent, Tom House (MLB pitching coach), and Tigers Woods' former coach Sean Foley; spiritual thinkers Ram Dass and Deepak Chopra, and dozens of celebrities known for their passion for the game, including Bill Murray, Kenny G, Kelly Slater and executive producer Cary Woods. Lang is supplementing his own financing of the film with a Kickstarter campaign.

Ever since Scots began whacking a ball across fences with sticks in the Middle Ages, golf has beguiled yet confounded millions and become an intellectual pursuit more akin to chess than a show of physical prowess. Like few other pursuits, golf has spanned the cultural gap between East and West, and is thought by some as the most Eastern of "Western" sports. Golf is both a challenging game and sport at once, yet more popular in terms of customer spending in North America than football, baseball, basketball and hockey combined.

Lang came to filmmaking from photography. Considered by David LaChapelle as his protg, he moved into making music videos for Moby, Public Enemy and Escondido, as well as commercial films for Louis Vuitton, Hollister, Honda, Red Bull, Sony, Serato and TED. He hopes his latest film is illustrative and instructive, one that both entertains and educates with an overview of the game.

After establishing his thesis with background, interviews and commentary, Lang will convene a group retreat - a master class of pros, celebrities and amateurs - at a golf resort and put his theory of the mind-body connection to the test. There, teachers Dr. John Demartini; Tim Kramer; PGA Master Professional Scott Cranfield; Julie Elion; and Mahadeva Ishaya, the Scottish monk turned golf pro, will focus on the mental aspects of training, utilize scientific techniques like biofeedback and physiological telemetry, and methods ranging from meditation to Zen archery.

Subjects will play no more than an hour of golf at a time per day. A control group receiving conventional golf instruction will establish a baseline for the experiment. Then, the players will return home, resume their competitive play and the film will document their results. Lang expects to complete the film in time for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, where golf returns to medal competition for the first time in more than a century.

"People have tackled elements of the mind-body connection in sport - and in golf in particular," Lang explains. "But nobody has yet undertaken a comprehensive overview, analysis, training and tracking of a multi-platform experience - a player's surrender to the vast potential of the mind's control over that little white ball - as 'Be the Ball' will do."

He continues, "There are many different ways of accessing the zone; spirituality is one of several ways to get there. We are combining that with a number of mind-based stress reduction models to make it achievable for both pros and amateurs."

Lang promises his film will ignite a global sports-spirituality movement. "There is no Holy Grail in golf," he concludes. "But many little cups of wisdom, serenity and focus that, used together, offer real potential to make a fundamental change in a player's success and satisfaction at every skill level. Our film promises to show players and fans the best of them."

"Be the Ball's" Kickstarter program will offer a variety of premiums for golfers, mystics and fans alike contributing to the fundraising campaign: autographed items, memorabilia, golf lessons, DVDs and other unique items. Premiums range from "good karma for one round" all the way up to taking part in the experiment on set with Lang.

Read more here:

Golf Documentary in the Works

Ever do something amazing in a game and wish you could share the clip with the world (or at least Facebook)? Well, thanks to a plethora of built-in tools and software designed to record gameplay, it's easier than ever before. Read on for Kotaku's (mostly) definitive guide to capturing gameplay video on your consoles, PC, or even a Mac!

We often get asked how to capture and share clips either for YouTube or for our Highlight Reel feature. During the last console generation, players had to use external devices to capture gameplay video. Now the latest round of consoles (well, two of them) have built-in video capture and streaming functions, but even those can cause some hassles if you want to upload your video to YouTube instead of OneDrive or Facebook.

Since I'll be covering a variety of products and applications, this post will focus on the basics of each. I'll get more detailed with the consoles since those will be the most commonly used. Let's get started!

Whether you're shopping for a video capture device, trying to get video from one program to work with another, or any number of other situations, these terms might come up. This is just a super-basic explanation for each in case you get lost during this article.

To capture video from a console through a third-party device, you'll have to turn off your console's HDCP setting (thanks, Hollywood). Theoretically, your video apps like Netflix might not work while HDCP is turned off, but I've been able to use Netflix with HDCP off, so...

_()_/

When capturing video, you want to keep in mind what your goal is going to be. If you just want to share unexpected moments, you need some kind of buffer recording feature, otherwise you'll have dozens of hours of video to go through every time you want to find a 30-second clip. However, if you want to make fragvideos of all your countless headshots, you don't want to stop playing to click record every minute or two, so you need to be recording constantly. That means you need to be aware of how much each hour of video is taking up, and have enough hard drive space to store it all.

When using a video capture device to capture console footage, the device needs to be powered to pass the video through to your TV. If you don't want to constantly have to switch cables around or have your computer on, you can use an HDMI splitter between your console and the capture device to avoid that problem. This will split the HDMI signal so that one can go directly to your TV and the other to your capture device. It's a handy setup that will help you avoid some minor nuisances while playing. I'd suggest it to anyone who has some extra cash for a splitter.

The focus of this guide is on capturing short clips and getting them onto the internet to be seen by others. That is also the first step toward getting all the footage for bigger, more complicated projects, but that's a topic for a separate article. While this post won't explain exactly how to use every device or program, that should be easy enough to figure out. The goal here is to help point you in the right direction for whatever you might be trying to do, and to hopefully help you avoid some common mistakes.

Here is the original post:

How To Capture Video Game Footage On PS4, Xbox One, PC And Mac

Google Drive for both Android and iOS has matured quite a bit since its release. Here's some advice on getting started with the app.

Jason Cipriani/CNET

Editors' Note: This article was originally published April 24, 2012, and has been updated to reflect the numerous updates, changes and additions to Google Drive since then.

Since its launch in early 2012, the Google Drive app has seen many changes. When it originally launched it replaced the Google Docs app, didn't allow you to actually edit documents on iOS, but allowed for creating and editing Google Docs files within the Android app. Now it better serves as a hub for accessing the various types of files you store within Google Drive.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

The main screen of Google Drive provides a few options for navigating your files. You will have quick access to files in your Drive, any documents that have been shared with you, any files or folders you have starred, recently opened or edited as well as any files you have downloaded for offline access.

When you first launch the app, you'll find a list of your folders and files stored in Google Drive. The default thumbnail view (pictured on the left above) can be changed to a list view (middle) by tapping on the list icon in the top menu bar.

Naturally, tapping on an item will open it. Tapping on the "i" icon, however, will open the details screen (pictured right) for the respective file or folder. On this screen you can view who has access, when changes were made, who made them and other important details. Additionally, you will find options for sharing, moving, deleting, renaming, starring (for quick access) and for files the option to download it to your device for offline access.

Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

The Google Drive app for Android was recently updated with the Material Design language, complete with a floating "New" button and fun animations. Tapping on the circular, red button will bring up a prompt. The options for creating a new document include uploading a file from your device, scanning a document, creating a folder and lastly, creating a Docs, Sheets or Slides document. The iOS app is sure to receive the same design treatment, but in the mean time you can tap on the "+" in the upper-right hand corner to create a new document.

See the article here:

How to use Google Drive on Android, iOS